


Regarding the Shape of the Soul

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All Sorts of Bullshit, Gen, Hogwarts Era, James Potter Lives, Magical Theory, Resurrection, Scotland, Tag suggestions VERY appreciated I have -3 idea how to describe this, Tea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-04-06 23:54:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: On the fifteenth of December, 2001, at eleven PM, Harry Potter found a door off the seventh-floor Charms corridor which opened onto blank space.On the sixteenth of December, 2001, at four AM, James Potter clawed his way out of the earth.His hands were torn and bloodied from digging, he wore no clothes and his head ached something fierce, but his magic bubbled beneath his skin and the moon was bright.James sat on his headstone for a moment, and listened to the sounds of birds moving in the trees; he looked down, and saw the name of his wife, and the cold hit him like a bludger.





	1. december

**Author's Note:**

> HEY WARNING: if u suffer from delusions/paranoia/that one disease where u think ur dead, this is Not The Fic For You. james is dead, he's super dead, that fucks with magic and his perception of himself, he's like 'do i exist,' its not great if ur prone to the sort of thinking urself. might also not be fab for some types of disassociation.
> 
> if ur coming here from Venus, please dont expect this to update at that sort of speed. i dont have that many words in me.

 

On the fifteenth of December, 2001, at eleven PM, Harry Potter found a door off the seventh-floor Charms corridor which opened onto blank space.

 

On the sixteenth of December, 2001, at four AM, James Potter clawed his way out of the earth.

 

//

 

His hands were torn and bloodied from digging, he wore no clothes and his head ached something fierce, but his magic bubbled beneath his skin and the moon was bright.

 

James sat on his headstone for a moment, and listened to the sounds of birds moving in the trees; he looked down, and saw the name of his wife, and the cold hit him like a bludger.

 

There was a crack like a gunshot, and he stood in a dusty bedroom in a dusty manor in the Caingorns; it was no warmer, but the moon was just as bright through the glass, and there was no wind to bite at his bones.

 

Until dawn he wandered the house, throwing up dust from faded carpets, pulling on an old tartan dressing-gown which fit like a second skin, walking under whispering portraits and saying nothing. When the sky was more light than dark he sat on the roof, watching the hills in the comforting company of a finger of scotch and a cup of tea. The wind from the mountains bit like the alcohol - that is to say, it intoxicated him. 

 

He didn’t - the memory of Beyond faded, blurred like an old polaroid, but he wasn’t sure if that was his mind or the true experience. He sure as hell, however, did not remember anything so wonderful as an icy wind or a grey sunrise or a cup of smoky, bitter tea - things so real as to be intangible. 

 

The slate below him was cold and slightly rough to the touch; fog rose from the overgrown lawn; a russet-coloured red stag, crowned with a shaggy mane and bloodied antlers, stood regal on an outcrop to greet the sun. James waved.

 

//

 

He washed his torn hands in a brook and walked - he had to be very careful not to float - to the north tower, up too many flights of stairs but his thighs never started to burn. He worried, briefly, about what that meant. 

 

The North Tower - god. Merlin.

 

He grew up here, in this room, blue and gold and too much marquetry for a boy who never appreciated it. He sat at his childhood desk, and thought  _ what would Lily do? _

 

He took his own advice, and took out a piece of parchment - almost brown, now, this house was a museum - and titled it  _ Priorities _ .

 

//

 

The first entry was a blurry #1.  _ When am I? _

 

He crossed that out, and wrote a new first entry: #1.  _ Locate glasses. _

 

He had . . . no idea how to approach this. Had he left a pair here? Had they buried his with him? Were they on the floor of the cottage, discarded, covered in dust like this skeleton of a house? He didn’t know.

 

So he re-wrote #2. _ When am I? _

 

There was a clear answer to that one; the sweet-shop a mile down the road would stock newspapers, and newspapers would have a date on.

//

 

He felt like his magic turned inside-out, and he stood outside the newsagents.

 

There was no warning, no crack, no spinning or soot or squeezing; couldn’t be a portkey, couldn’t be apparation, he had just... failed to be where he expected to be, ie. the north tower, and instead was where he needed to be. 

 

The man behind the counter eyed him - a different man than there used to be, but there was a resemblance - a cousin? - and he made his way inside. 

 

The headline on the Times was nondescript - something about the economy - but holy fuck, the photos were in  _ colour. _ He had to hold the paper about an inch from his eye to read the date, and almost wished he hadn’t. Fifteen years.  _ Fifteen years. _

 

But his breakdown had to wait. 

 

He fumbled in his dressing-gown pockets - why was there change in his dressing gown? - and produced five crisp pound notes, but the cashier whispered ‘poor bugger’ when he proffered them, and declined a charge to no explanation. James was several yards up the road before he realised that was a perfectly reasonable reaction to a chap with bloodied hands standing in your shop in his moth-bitten dressing-gown and no socks squinting at newspapers.

 

//

 

Okay then, he thought. Next priority; #3.  _ Harry. _

 

Like the glasses, he thought-- there was a solution, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t even know where Harry had gone, or if he’d-- survived--

 

What if he hadn’t? What if Lily’s spell had failed? 

 

What if his family was gone, all of them, Lily and his parents and Harry, fuck, even the  _ cat _ , god, Remy and Sirius weren’t planning on surviving the war, what if they were gone and he couldn’t join them? 

 

He had come back from the grave - what if his family was gone and  _ he had to stay? _

 

James’ heart beat inside his chest, and it ached.

 

//

 

He peeled himself off the pavement about an hour later, when the street-lights were off and the corner-shop man looked less pitying and more like he’d quite like to throw a rock. His eyes were red and his hands shook, but he wasn’t sure how much of that was real and how much was him  _ wanting _ to feel it. His body felt too tight.

 

He held his right hand out, pushed this new magic about under his skin. It flowed like he was casting something big, something to shake the earth, but once it was done bubbling in his fingertips it just receded like the tide.

 

There was a crack-- of course there was, of  _ course,  _ why can’t this new life work like it’s supposed to-- and the Knight Bus pulled up on the dirt road outside of Feshiebridge. It was huge and hulking and bright, bright purple, the brightest thing he’d seen since he died, and he laughed a creaking laugh. 

 

The conductor was some spotty kid right out of his NEWTS, but when James last rode it there was just a different spotty kid conducting, so it felt almost familiar.

 

The kid - Ernie? - accepted the pound notes, at least, even if he had to confer with the driver about whether they could take muggle currency. The shrunken head winked  at him like he knew something.

 

The bus drive was - calming, even if James blinked and found himself  _ above _ the bus for a moment or two, watching the hairpin turns.

 

//

 

Inverness in winter was rather like Hogwarts in winter - calm and beautiful and sparkling from snow-fall, and just as magical if you looked right - but no-one in Inverness recognised him if he was clever, and in Hogwarts there was the pressure of eyes who knew him, and as such Inverness beat Hogwarts by a considerable margin. It was not, however, somewhere you could wander about at nine in the morning, smelling of scotch, in a grubbied dressing-gown, and so James made his way slowly to the corner of Nac Man and Feegle Street, savouring the scenery more than probably he should, what with it being December in the Highlands and him having no socks.

 

He stood on the corner for a minute or two, mind blank and wishing he’d gone for his wand first thing, staring at the brick he had to tap. He was close to panicking - his feet were  _ freezing,  _ he needed a wand, he needed a warming charm, he needed to see if Gringotts would let him in, he needed cash to buy socks - but he eventually put his trust in the Thing, the thing that ached, and - walked through the wall. Okay. Okay. He would sort that out later.

 

For now, well, he needed a wand.

 

//

 

The goblin at the desk was... brisk, in a word. He was sneered at, and prodded by guards, and pricked with needles to verify his blood, and walked under a waterfall to check for illusions, and the marble floors did nothing for his poor freezing feet, but eventually he was sat down with a verification of identity. 

The goblin said, “Thought you died.”

“So did I,” replied James.

And that was the end of that conversation.

//

He had cash now, so most of his problems were at least partially solved. Although he was still, essentially, a man in a dressing-gown in the middle of the road, there was a generous handful of galleons in each of his pockets, and that made the denizens of the city much less likely to throw stones at him.

//

Gertrude Ollivander ran a wand-shop now, which was surreal. He could swear she was a third-year when he left Hogwarts - but the woman behind the counter of Inverness Wands was white-haired and venerable and, apparently, wildly overqualified, judging by the letters she rattled off in her introduction. She smiled brightly at him, and kept up the ‘I-know-things-you-don’t’ patter that Gellert Ollivander had patented in 1200, but she frowned when she thought he wasn’t watching, and when she was measuring him he swore she tried to wave a hand through him to check if he was real. Which was reasonable -- he would probably do the same, if he were able.

She questioned him briefly on why he needed a new wand, but accepted the excuse of a vague quidditch accident, and accepted his name as Charles Field without any further kerfuffle.

(James wasn’t sure of the wisdom of falsifying an identity, but it wasn’t possible to give his real name, and glasses-less and aged as he appeared to be, he wasn’t counting on being recognised. And even -- even long-term, if he stayed live-dead for long-term, he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to be James Potter again. Everyone James Potter loved was dead.)

His new wand -- he was hesitant to call it ‘his,’ it felt like a loan -- was mahogany again, near featureless, just a smooth column in dark red that narrowed to a vicious point. It gave an impression of being serrated, somehow, despite not actually having an edge. It didn’t feel like his old one - it had no personality. Using it felt like using a knife. There was no conversation. He worried that it suited him.

But when he cast an  _ accio  _ in the street, his glasses landed tidy in his hand with no complaint, and a warming charm from this new wand, despite a phantom sensation of rain, was just as warm as he expected -- which was really all he needed.

//

Putting his newly-summoned glasses  _ on, _ however, was a trip and a fucking half.

Tacked up on the pillar outside some swanky new coffee shop was, well, Sirius. 

Sirius, half-wild and screaming, Sirius as young as he knew him but gaunt and violent and screaming. From Azkaban.

He was as young as he knew him - this was not some Sirius from now-a-days, when things were different and sometimes people weren’t who he remembered.. 

The man on the poster was Sirius from weeks, days after he’d seen him last, eleven years ago. There was nothing Siri could have done. Sirius was dangerous, but he wasn’t . . . he would never do something that would wind him in Azkaban. He wouldn’t want to be anywhere near his family.

A correction. There was something he  _ could _ have done, something the authorities could be persuaded he had done, if the facts lined up just wrong.

If Remus had stood back and watched the Ministry imprison an innocent man.


	2. fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> james has something to say. he doesn't say it.

 

James tore the poster down and found himself back on the roof of the Manor with no warning, a light snow falling. Watching the scenery for a thousand hours and not thinking of things sounded incredibly appealing, but his warming charm wasn’t holding up to freezing slate and three inches of snow, so he fell through the tiles and collapsed  on to his bed, staring at the floorboards.

 

Socks. Right. Probably should have done that first.

 

//

 

James went right back to staring at the floorboards, and alternated that with staring out the window for what was, honestly, probably several hours. 

 

His house, his parent’s house, was huge and cold and smelt of dust in a way it never had before. His footsteps were the only footsteps in the dust, and they wavered, and sometimes skipped a few metres where he wasn’t sure if he was walking or just imagining that he was walking.

 

//

 

He took the stairs up to the North Tower this time, and he was careful to make him legs work properly, to exert pressure with his thighs instead of just pulling himself up with -- magic, weaponised density, whatever it is. And when he got to the top, his legs ached like they should, and he grinned, because he felt real. 

 

He sat down at his old bureau, with the ink-stain on the green leather blotter, and smoothed the torn poster down. It was crumpled from his fist and from the wind, but Sirius’ face was clear as day.

 

He took out his parchment, and tried to channel his mother, relentlessly pragmatic as she was. He crossed out #3.  _ Harry,  _ and wrote #3 _. Sirius. _

 

_ Pragmatism, _ he thought. It hurt. But he didn’t even know if Harry was alive. Sirius, now, Siri was alive and in danger and Remus hadn’t done anything, or had done something, Remus had been awful and dreadful and James hated him for a moment before it evaporated like smoke. 

 

Even if James wasn’t real, he could try to fix this. 

 

He could be good for something.

 

//

 

He made himself a cup of tea and stared at his open wardrobe. Most of his clothes were in Godric’s Hollow, and there was no way in heaven or hell he was going back there ever again. There was enough here, though, to build an outfit that at once suggested ‘I’m back, bitches,’ and ‘definitely not a dread creature from beyond the Veil, no sirree.’

 

//

 

He wound up not in a spectacular ensemble or a dapper suit, but in a pale pink silk kameez that he’d been given by his father, and he only wore that because when he looked in the mirror he saw his dad, and couldn’t bring himself to go back into that room after that.

 

He decided to go the whole hog, and accessorised with an enormous yellow scarf and his old punk buckle-y boots, because if he was going to look like his father he’d look like a cool father with no sense of propriety. And also it was December, and his temperature receptors had started working while he’d been staring at the floor.

 

//

 

The wand in his hand spun lazily -- Point Me wasn’t made for  _ people _ \-- but James pushed his magic into it as though it was just another metatarsal, and the magic moved smoothly and his wand pointed decisively north.

 

In a moment was running. His hooves were tearing up the grass and he didn’t care - there was wind in his fur and his magic felt like a new skeleton, glowing like neon under his skin, and he was going to  _ fix this. _

 

//

 

At some point - the twenty-mile mark, he suspected - he forgot to stay parallel to the ground, and tore unthinkingly into a mountain.

 

For a very, very long moment he was made of stone. 

 

Granite, he thought, the Caingorms granite, pink and shot with strata, but he couldn’t tell what it looked like when he  _ was _ it- the thinking was after. And when he was hundreds, thousands of metres below the surface - then he was a figure made of magma, a body at a thousand degrees and still moving, hurtling forwards through the molten rock. When he reached the other side, the only indication that a man had been a mountain was a set of smoking hoof-prints.

 

//

 

Half an hour and a piss break later, James barreled into a horse. The horse was in a lake, and James had no idea why, and was too disturbed by his new knowledge of the inside of a horse to question why. The horse chose to answer his question by turning partially into a fish and swimming away, but by then, James was occupied with a different view. 

 

Hogwarts rose above him, the sun impossibly bright behind Gryffindor tower, snow impossibly bright on the ground. 

 

//

 

There was a stag in the lake. Horses, Remus could deal with, the kelpies sometimes came up to poke at students when the mer got stabby, but this was a stag treading water and  _ grinning  _ in a terribly human way.

 

“Holy fuck,” he said.

 

The stag’s head snapped around, and Remus was filled with the strangest mixture of fear, grief and wild, hopeful euphoria as it moved towards him, maintaining eye contact in a way he had never seen a real animal do.

 

The stag moved from the centre of the lake to the bank in less than a moment, fifty metres in a second and Remus was properly scared now. A boggart? Had seeing Harry hit him hard enough to change his boggart? Or some kind of sick, sadistic, mind-reading Kelpie? He should  _ know _ this, god, he was an idiot, he  _ teaches defence, _ he should be able to identify whatever monster was in the Black Lake impersonating his  _ dead friends -- _

 

The creature was staring him right in the eyes from barely a foot away, and Remus stumbled back like he’d been shot. It moved forwards again and again, and it took Remus until he tripped over a tree root to realise it was  _ herding  _ him. 

 

Into the Forest.

 

//

 

The creature shifted, its skin moving as muscles and bones broke and reformed. It looked painful, more physical than any transformation he’d ever seen before.

 

There was no time to wonder, though, because James was stood in front of him, antlers still perched on his head, grinning manic and angry.

 

Before the creature could speak, if it even could speak, Remus hit it with a stick.

//

James woke in a strange place to a throbbing in his head and the slow-soft-silver veil of Veritaserum across his mind. He wanted - he  _ needed _ to move, to run, to clip out of here like the video-game glitches he’d been having since he died, but he just stared at the ceiling and breathed slowly. He couldn’t even muster the energy to panic.

Remus’ voice came, low and angry from behind him - “What are you.” 

His previous anger was gone, stolen by the potion, so he just grinned slowly because this was  _ Remus, _ Remus his friend, and Remus wouldn’t hurt him. 

But he was still a little bit of a shit, even drugged and possibly concussed, and so replied - completely truthfully - “Tired. Surprisingly comfortable. Clever, devastatingly handsome, if predisposed to --”

“What  _ manner of creature  _ are you?” Remus interrupted, curt. ”Why are you impersonating my friend? Why are you here?”

“Human, probably,” James replied. “Are you still human when you’re dead? And I’m - I’m not impersonating anyone. Or at least, I don’t think I am and - how would I tell? If I were doing it properly? And -” Here James’ eyebrows pulled together, and he looked more like the manic creature on the bank. “I’m here because of Sirius.”

//

Remus stared at the melancholy figure on his sofa, dressed in pink, wild curls even more riotous than usual, his antlers still protruding from his head the way they did on days James didn’t want to be human anymore, looking exactly like James did, except somehow older and more tired and less real. He could swear the creature had-- had  _ floated,  _ when he dragged it upstairs, as though it wasn’t quite tethered to the earth. Maybe the beast was lighter than a human. But despite all the incongruencies - it’d got the accent right. It spoke with the soft Scots burr James had only used around them, opting for his educated RP at school. No polyjuice, no glamour could capture that.

He dispelled the potion, suddenly tired, and sighed.

James-- the creature-- James bolted straight upright, so fast he didn’t seem to move, and flung his arms out sideways with a ridiculous grin on his face. Remus aimed a  _ homo revelium _ at him, and then a  _ finite incantem, _ and a volley of other spells.

James frowned, and said “Remus, I wanted a hug.”

//

James’ hugs were just as warm and real as Remus remembered, even if both of them clung a little tighter than they used to. But it was over too soon, and James stepped away, looking him straight in the eyes in a manner not designed to anger but to unnerve. It was his Dad Face of Strong Displeasure, and it was a reminder that he was here for something.

(Actually, strictly speaking-- it was Fleamont Potter’s Dad Face, superimposed on James’ face. He was-- god, James was thirty-five. Thirty-six, maybe. He’d been dead for over a third of Remus’ life. Almost half.)

James whirled and spread a crumpled poster out flat on a student’s desk, and when Remus saw it it felt like all the breaths he’d ever take were punched right out of him, all at once.

//

James watched as Remus’ face crumpled, and felt like a bit of a cad. 

Remus took a few thin breaths, and visibly struggled with his tongue, his brow furrowed like he was sorting a maths problem, if maths problems could make him cry.

“James--” Remus started, and stopped, and started again, staring resolutely at the grain of the desk;- “James, after Siri-- After Sirius left Godric’s Hollow, Peter tracked him down. Told him he knew what he did. And Siri. . .”

Here Remus scuffed a hand up his face, covering his scars, in a way James hadn’t seen since second year.

“Siri killed him.”

A heartbeat.

“I beg your pardon?”


	3. do you remember?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thats magic lava powers babe!!! also hey harry how u doing? unconcious? neat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey whats up it absolutely hasnt been three months what are you talkin about

Sirius had-- people died-- people died but Siri wouldn’t-- Peter would-- would he? 

Peter lived, probably-- the map, the map said he lived-- a lying, gutless quisling, the worst kind of traitor-- but he lived-- at least, at least he lived, still--

The map-- Harry had it-- oh gods--

And Remus had done nothing-- Remus didn’t know-- he should have known-- could never have known-- somehow he should have known--

And Siri, Sirius in Azkaban-- like his parents always wanted-- because-- because what? Because people died? People-- people die all the time-- look at him, he’s dead-- he would know about dying-- just chance, really--

Who killed them? Not Sirius-- never Sirius-- but the Black madness runs deeper than blood-- Peter wouldn’t-- Peter would--

Would he?

Remus poured two cups of tea.

//

“You know when there are too many plot twists, or too many new characters, or whatever, in a book, and you might have loved it but all of a sudden you’re in another book entirely and you don’t really like the new one? And you’re muddling along in this new book where the author thinks you know everyone but you’re just guessing? That’s sort of what those few months were like.” James curled over his cup of tea, the warmth of the cup and the fire and Remus’ body pressed against his side more soothing than anything had been since he died.

“After the prophecy - everything was suddenly both more and less real, at once. The danger was real but nothing else seemed to be, like because we were angry and scared all of us could hurt each other without repercussion, like all of us were phantoms for a while.

“We didn’t know-- we didn’t know if there even was a traitor, but the mere idea that someone knew where we were, where Lily and Harry were hiding-- none of us were in a mood to take chances. But no-one had any idea.

“Sirius-- I am ashamed on his behalf to say he thought it was you. And I will be ashamed on your behalf when I tell him you thought it was him. Lily thought some member of the Order had been taken, though she made no judgements as to whom. And I, naive, thought the best of all of you, thought we would all die rather than betray our friends, as we all said we would.

“Sirius, though-- I couldn’t ignore him. He convinced Lily, not of your guilt but of the guilt of someone, and persuaded me that our secret keeper couldn’t be public knowledge.”

James could see, then, when Remus got it, but continued anyway.

“We switched the Secret. Peter held it. And it turned out we were all wrong.”

Remus blinked, and said “That explains some things, and fails to explain several other key things.” And that summed up most of James’ life, he thought.

//

After a revelation like that there was little left for them to do but curl close on the sofa and look at the fire and for James to shuck his boots and wiggle his toes and say “Look at these socks, aren’t they nice?” and for Remus to agree.

//

James pouted as Remus’ fingers slipped out of his hair, but settled back into the sofa easily when he set a plate of biscuits - a present from Minerva- in front of him.

Remus debated taking him with him, but-- the sight of another dead man would only create more chaos, and so when he left for the Shrieking Shack he said “Stay here,” as he ruffled James’ hair.

//

James tried. He really, truly tried. After all, Remus-- Remus the dyed-in-the-wool pacifist-- had hit him over the head upon first seeing him. So he sat in Remus’ quarters for half an hour and ate gingersnaps and opened and closed eight different books, trying to ignore the worry and the ADHD creeping up his spine. 

After thirty-five minutes, however-- he counted-- a dementor flew past the window, blocking out the light of the sunset and turning the world at once to midnight.

His heart stopped, for a moment, as blood-blood-blood-red eyes wavered in the air before him and he seized from head to toe with fear-terror-cold-cold-ache for his family.

But just for a moment, and then it was replaced with fear-terror--cold-cold-ache for Remus, for Sirius and still, even, after everything, for Peter.

//

The map- the map- Remus had left it open on the table and as soon as he thought to look ink bloomed across its surface like it recognised him.

And then there was not time for his fear, because as soon as he saw the tiny scrawled ‘Harry Potter’ where the dementors were swarming, he was standing on the incline above the lake, and thundering down it, towards Harry and Sirius on the bank, towards the foul beast in the way, more angry than he had ever been in his life.

//

The anger felt like before, like flying through the mountain, like when he was made of magma, and while he ran head-long and far too tangible through the scraps of black fabric and the shreds of bone he wondered what that must taste like to a dementor.

And when smoke curled before his eyes and a red-hot glow lit the next dementor in line - why, he burned that creature up too.

//

Harry woke up. It was uneventful, really, except that he hadn’t been expecting to.

There was cold water under his fingertips. It moved slowly, like ripples on a pond, and he focused on that as he rose slowly out of unconsciousness.

He ran a checklist.

He felt cold pebbles, a few sharp rocks, icy water, something warm and dry and slightly acrid like a furnace behind him. 

He tasted the dryness and tackiness of mouth one gets after passing out, the dregs of a bar of chocolate, tears on his lips.

He smelt petrichor, some kind of caustic smoke, a brisk wind, and fabric burning.

He heard very little, only soft breathing, the quiet movement of the water and the susurration of the forest. There were no birds, despite the light behind his eyelids.

He opened his eyes.

//

Sirius was alive, at least, but he didn’t know much else, because Sirius was curled around a man in pale pink who looked like he’d been crying. He, in turn, was warming his boots over a lively campfire which cast his face into obscuring shadow. The man-- what little of him that Harry could see looked familiar, like Harry should know him, and he looked at Harry like he knew him.

//

The man in pink picked Sirius up, slowly, like he was holding something precious, and stepped towards Harry. 

It became clear that the acrid heat was radiating from him, as dry heat rolled off him in waves. The sand where he had sat was melted into glass, and what he had previously thought was a campfire was in fact the still-glowing remains of a dementor that looked like it’d been burnt from the inside out, rock-like and charred. While he watched, the lava-red veins on its surface moved like the surface of a volcano.

Somehow, despite the fact that the man in pink was burning an unkillable monster from beyond the veil, Harry remained only slightly unnerved. Perhaps it was the tear tracks in the ash on his dark skin, perhaps it was the dent in his glasses, perhaps it was the care he’d taken when lifting Sirius, but Harry didn’t think he’d hurt him. 

That didn’t stop him from flinching and drawing his wand when the man stepped towards him, and he-- he looked bereft, tragic, for a moment, before he seemed to pull himself together.

//

The man on fire seemed not to struggle with carrying a grown man up a hill and five flights of stairs, and Harry carefully filed every new oddity away in a folder marked ‘what the fuck even is magic?’

//

They’d walked back in silence, except for when the man had pulled them both behind a tree and hissed ‘Snape!’

He navigated Hogwarts like he’d grown up here, looking to the paintings for landmarks like Harry did, except for some moments where he seemed to forget that people generally had a hard time walking through walls.

He was similar in Remus’ rooms; he was familiar with their position, and walked into the private quarters like he had permission, but he was awkward in the way only a guest can be. He knew where the tea-chest was, and proffered a plate of biscuits like an apology, but he reached for the plain black mugs instead of the battered tea-cups Harry knew Remus favoured and he had to search for the sugar when Harry asked.

//

When Sirius was laid out on a conjured sofa and Harry and the man in pink arrayed on a real one, the man broke the silence suddenly, asking if he would like chocolate, a sandwich, if he needs to go the the infirmary, if he would like to go back to the dorms, and etcetera, in a wavering Scots accent that sounded far more frightened than the man’s demeanor had let on. At a certain point Harry completely lost patience and interrupted, in the steeliest voice he could muster, “You still haven’t told me your name.”

The man subsided in a moment, quiet, and again strangely sad before he let out a quiet, creaking laugh. He sounded slightly like he was in pain.

“I feel slightly like I should have a black mask and a respirator,” he said, and continued before Harry could question the non-sequitur. “Harry, I’m your father.”

//

In extremis, Harry tended to revert to the survival instincts the Dursleys had beaten into him, and in this case the survival instinct was politeness.

“Beg pardon?” he said, realised he was not a character on Downton Abbey, and followed with a succinct “What the fuck?”

Despite his disbelief, however, the similarities were clear as soon as Harry looked-- the man’s hair was longer and fell in tighter curls than his, but it was just as uncontrollable as his own. Their mouths were the same shape, pointed and wide, and while Harry’s was lighter their skin was tinted with the same warm cast where the bones were close to the surface. And he-- James-- his dad-- the stranger bounced when he stood still and drummed his fingers just as Harry did.

But any wizard could imitate features, and anyone good enough at observation could copy mannerisms; Harry was not convinced.

//

James assured him that Remus would come back and confirm where Harry had doubts, but in the mean-time Harry wouldn’t leave him alone with Sirius-- part of him was sad that he didn’t trust him, but the majority of James was just pleased that he seemed to care so much for Sirius.

//

At a certain point-- when Harry’s lack of sleep and Dementor-induced exhaustion began to override his good sense and suspicion-- he muttered a jumbled sentence about fetching breakfast for Remus in the morning and, to James’ indescribable delight, subsided into slumber on his shoulder.

At a different certain point-- when James’ traitorous brain reminded him of exactly what Harry had said and what that implied-- James was forced for the second time that day to go gallivanting across the country-side in search of Remus Lupin, although this time the Remus in question was a slightly different shape.

//

By the time that he opened his eyes, Harry had convinced himself that, delirious from cold and the dementors, he had hallucinated the mess with his father and the burnt creatures. After all, there were few real limitations on magic, but ‘the dead cannot be revived’ and ‘dementors cannot be killed’ were on the list. The man in his dream had got up after being dead for eleven years and killed fifty dementors at once, and neither of those things could be done, and thus he didn’t do them, and thus he wasn’t real.

It was sound logic, and he was pleased with it, but unfortunately his reasoning withered in the face of a slightly charred golden-yellow scarf and a lukewarm cup of lapsang souchong. 

//

(The tea was sure it had been an english breakfast when it was poured, but its transfigurative inertia had fallen apart in the face of a Potter with odd, wild magic and very precise tastes.)

//

The night slipped past in moments, in the splinters of moonlight between bare branches and in clouds of warm breath in the air as James tore through first the forest and then the mountains behind. The hours sped past in the manner that time is wont to do when a friend is in danger; as though a second is an hour and an hour is a second, and all the while you can’t quite breathe right.

For all that James had raced across the country at a mile a minute only recently, the task of searching the forest could not be done at the sort of break-neck gut-stealing speed he would have wished for. In fact, it was not until the cold grey fingers of the dawn rose over the earth like frost on a window-pane that he found what he was looking for.

//

James found Moony in a flash of claws on a heather-covered hillside. 

The bright pearls of blood on his flanks lent the first colour to the new day, as Moony had faded from his childhood ochre brown to the same slate-grey as the winter sky and there is nothing quite so colourless as fear, drawn out.

//

Time passed, and the blood dried to a chill, and teeth passed dizzyingly close to (and, once, only once, terribly horribly through) the bundle of magic and mist that James called himself, and James led them on what might be termed a merry chase if the speaker was feeling particularly irreverent. 

Eventually, though-- far too late, as though any time would be permissible considering Moony’s scars, some far too faded and some far too fresh-- the sun beat back the Scottish winter far enough to dim the moon and call Remus back from the place where he went that he refused to talk about.

//

Remus woke up swiftly, and upon doing so immediately wished he hadn’t. 

There was blood in his mouth, thick and metallic and choking, and he cursed the sense that let him know it was human. And then him memories returned, slowly, and he remembered about the mess in the shrieking shack, and for a moment that felt like a train crash in slow-motion he was terrified he had bitten a child.

But as he moved, the figure that stood cautiously a few feet away burst into motion, and Remus found himself with an armful, once again, of a dead man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so GODDAMN PRETENTIOUS how can u stand this lmao

**Author's Note:**

> james: claws his way out of the earth, its grisly as shit, like some horror movie up in here  
> james: what i need is a Cup Of Tea


End file.
